After listening, Earth Monkey clenched the cards in his hand tightly and asked in a low voice, “What kind of idiom is that?”
“Sharp, so sharp,” Qiao Jiajin ignored Earth Monkey and nodded vigorously. “‘King,’ right? Then I’ll follow with ‘Son of a Bitch’!”
“That’s a great idiom!” Chen Junnan grinned. “‘Son’… I’ll follow with… ‘Rat and Ugly Monkey’! Damn, ‘Ugly Monkey’ is just too perfect.”
“Monkey?” Qiao Jiajin thought for a moment. “I’ll go with ‘Monkey Is Really Ugly’…”
“Enough!!” Earth Monkey slammed his hand on the table hard.
Fortunately, the table was sturdy enough, and the group only felt the ground shake slightly from the impact.
“Oh ho…?” Chen Junnan leaned back and casually propped his legs up on the table.
“Are you two done yet? Can you shut up?” Earth Monkey said with clear displeasure.
“Damn it…” Chen Junnan echoed impatiently. “Monkey Bro, is this some kind of fucking library? Do I have to stay quiet the whole time just to play a damn game?”
“Then let me ask you something,” Earth Monkey sneered. “In a game that requires strategy and calculation at every turn, you’re resorting to the cheapest tricks. If you win like this, will you even feel satisfied?”
“Absolutely,” Chen Junnan replied. “How about you?”
“You bastard!” Earth Monkey slapped the table and stood up abruptly.
Qiao Jiajin and Chen Junnan instantly rose to their feet as well, their auras just as intimidating as Earth Monkey’s.
Qiao Jiajin pointed at Earth Monkey fiercely and spat, “What’s the matter?! Fat monkey, wanna throw hands?”
The three of them glared at each other, as if a fight could break out at any second.
Qi Xia, however, remained silent, sitting calmly in his seat and watching coldly. Chen Junnan had done his job well—all he needed was to keep disrupting Earth Monkey’s thoughts, making it impossible for him to strategize. If Earth Monkey couldn’t think clearly, winning this game would be nearly impossible for him.
Perhaps even Earth Monkey himself didn’t realize that three of the most notorious figures in the “Endgame” had gathered in this tiny casino today.
“You… really do seem like frequent casino-goers,” Earth Monkey sneered, forcing himself to calm down. “Back in the real world, I dealt with people like you every day. It’s almost nostalgic.”
“Sounds great, doesn’t it?” Chen Junnan tilted his head up. “I’m helping you relive the good old days, and I’m not even charging you for it.”
“Too bad I’m not the same person I was back then,” Earth Monkey shook his head, seemingly regaining his composure. He pulled out another cigarette from his pocket and clamped it between his lips. “Do you know the biggest difference between the ‘Endgame’ and the outside world?”
“There are no talking monkeys out there,” Chen Junnan answered.
Earth Monkey ignored him, lighting his cigarette calmly before saying, “Out there, there were things I didn’t dare do. Here, no one stops me.”
“Oh? You mean ‘murder’?” Chen Junnan asked.
“Yes,” Earth Monkey nodded. “But you’re right about one thing—I can’t kill you. But I could walk over right now, rip out your tongue, and leave you spitting blood for the rest of the game.”
“Well, that’s just unfortunate,” Chen Junnan retorted without backing down. “Let me clarify something for you—if you rip out my tongue, I won’t just spit blood incoherently. I’ll also curse incoherently, then hum ‘Good Fortune Comes’ in your ear thirty times while spraying blood all over your damn face. Every time you flip a card, I’ll spit blood at you. And when I run out of blood, I’ll crawl on the floor and write the character for ‘miserable’ on your ankle with my last breath. How’s that sound, huh?”
Earth Monkey hadn’t expected the man before him to have been holding back. In terms of sheer verbal sparring, Earth Monkey realized he stood no chance—his thoughts were even getting jumbled.
And while he might have dismissed such words from anyone else, coming from Chen Junnan, they carried an unsettling weight of credibility. It felt like he truly meant every word.
“That’s enough, Chen Junnan,” Qi Xia finally spoke. “Sit down.”
Without another word, Chen Junnan dropped back into his chair. Qiao Jiajin shot Earth Monkey one last glare before slowly sitting down as well.
Earth Monkey glanced at Qi Xia, frowning slightly, clearly surprised that these two seemingly lawless men would obey so readily.
“Watch yourself,” Earth Monkey warned Chen Junnan.
Chen Junnan leaned back, swinging his legs up in the air before letting them crash onto the table. Then, cupping a hand behind his ear, he tilted his head with an infuriating smirk. “Huh? Can’t hear ya, what’d you say??”
Earth Monkey ignored him, sitting back down to examine his hand—”New Year’s Eve.”
Among all the cards, only “New Year’s Eve” could yield “1-2-3” in the first round.
So Earth Monkey’s best path to victory was forming a straight.
As Qi Xia studied Earth Monkey, he suddenly felt something was off.
It was a visual anomaly.
Somewhere within his field of vision, something had changed in an almost imperceptible way.
Two seconds later, Qi Xia turned his gaze to the wooden box in the center of the table.
The box had always been there, yet he sensed—somehow—that it had altered.
Its position was the same, its shape unchanged, yet Qi Xia couldn’t shake the feeling that something was different.
Could it be…?
Qi Xia turned to Qiao Jiajin and said, “Fists, look at that wooden box.”
Qiao Jiajin glanced at it. “What about it?”
“Does its color seem different to you?” Qi Xia asked.
Both Qiao Jiajin and Chen Junnan, who was sitting farther away, turned to scrutinize the box.
The box’s intricate patterns were vivid, its body still a deep brown, with no obvious changes.
“Really…?” Qiao Jiajin asked. “Liar… are you seeing it as white?”
Qi Xia shook his head, wiping the blood from his eyes. Maybe he was overthinking it.
Perhaps blood had dripped into his eyes, or maybe his earlier dizziness had affected his vision. Regardless, the box’s color seemed slightly off to him—lighter than when he’d first seen it.
Yet when he stared at it intently, the color seemed unchanged.
Qi Xia shook his head, feeling the dissipating fog in his mind slowly creeping back. But this time, he had a solution.
He placed his hands beneath the table, then pinched the broken little finger of his right hand with his left, gritting his teeth as he squeezed hard.
The fog instantly cleared.
This broken finger was like a switch to dispel the haze. If it meant surviving this game, Qi Xia was willing to sacrifice nine more fingers just like it.
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